Convert class and byte arrays

Question

I want to convert to byte from other variable types without losing information. For example I want to convert Int32 to 4 bytes or Float into 4 bytes and put them into a byte array. It looks like the Convert.ToByte(int32) will only convert to one byte therefore I lose 3 bytes worth of information..... I am not sure can any one offer advice?

andrew · Answer

That's because >> operator returns int. You can just cast it to byte: = (byte)((0xFF00 & value) >> 8)

richang76 · Answer

Thanks Werdna but I tried this and it gives me an error of Cannot implicitly convert type int to byte

andrew · Answer

To get 4 bytes of int you can do: byte[] intBytes = new byte[4]; int value = 43342; intBytes[0] = 0xFF & value; intBytes[1] = (0xFF00 & value) >> 8; intBytes[2] = (0xFF0000 & value) >> 16; intBytes[3] = (0xFF000000 & value) >> 24; position 0 will hold least significant bit and position 4 will hold most significant bit. To convert back to int just use reverse procedure. You can also use serialization with BinaryFormatter to convert classes and native types from/to binary format.